Scheming Against the New.
How we see only what we believe.
Geoffrey Hamilton
Blog, June 6, 2006
The final episode of Desperate Housewives for this season called
Remember had a moment
of clarity of a particular
kind. Lynette, played by Felicity Huffman, and her stage husband were confronted by
his ex lover who suddenly
presents his secret fifteen year old love child to them both. Lynette assumed extorting 'child
support'
was all this mother wanted, but every time Lynette spoke or acted on that belief the mother
reasonably and rationally corrected her, thus leaving Lynette confused.
It was difficult for Lynette to tell what this mother really wanted. Lynette's mouth was left agape
because her original belief in what this situation was about was not working for her. Her state
of mind was not disbelief but shock that she couldn't actually see what was happening.
People are never
in disbelief in these situations they are just 'hysterically' blind.
This makes sense because the last part in the
process of perceiving anything, the 'framing' by the mind, cannot proceed without believing. Such
'framing' is the use of old beliefs to create newish old beliefs. The word
schema is
used in conventional psychology for the same process. Stunned faces and confused ideas only follow
when old beliefs completely fail to help fantasize a continuing reality. The moment
of clarity in Desperate Housewives was such a moment because it illustrated this failure perfectly.
This observation is at least as old as Nietzsche; "One hears only those questions for which
one is able to find answers", Gay Science. This
uneven philosopher took up this idea and blazed the way for many profound scientists and
psychologists to follow his lead. But few were able to follow for exactly the reason he states in the above quotation.
What people can answer is what they already believe and the goals they already accept.
This situation can
be reduced to the 'McGuffins' I referred to
last week. When
you fail, and this happens frequently, your particular arbitrary McGuffin is
lost, so you can't use it to see
all those 'believable' bits and pieces that fed into it. Think of all the
legal jargon at the bottom of a contract; not many people have the kind of McGuffin ,
such as a lawyer or politician does, to hang that babble on. The rest of us just see a
jumble of words. We are in effect blind.
Lynette's McGuffin (that the mother's own goal was extortion) failed her
and her refusal to take up an alternative showed her and us that the power of
belief is that belief is necessary for us to be allowed to see anything.
GRH
All essays
Blogs in order
Home
